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Ten Most Sprawl-Threatened Large Cities The amount of time Cincinnati drivers sit in gridlock increased by 200 percent from 1982 to 1994. While the number of people moving into the Cincinnati metro area has not risen significantly in recent years (8 percent in the 1980s and 2.2 percent from 1990 to 1996), its land area has spread out steadily over the years: from 335 square miles in 1970 to 512 square miles in 1990, a 53 percent increase. The area grew by another 12 percent between 1990 and 1996. As metropolitan Cincinnati's boundaries have widened, more and more people are moving farther away from the city's core. Commercial centers and housing units, in turn, are being arbitrarily scattered across the landscape, forcing residents to drive increasingly longer distances. Today, Cincinnati has one of the worst traffic problems in the country. The amount of time drivers sit in gridlock increased by a striking 200 percent in twelve years (1982 to 1994), the second biggest increase in the country. The average number of daily vehicle miles traveled per person jumped by 29 percent between 1990 and 1996. Cincinnati's sprawl has also seeped into its neighboring state. Southeastern Indiana saw 11.3 percent growth between 1990 and 1997, making it the state's fastest growing region. Almost all the growth can be attributed to the expansion of Cincinnati. Sprawl has brought other classic symptoms of poorly planned growth to Cincinnati, including lost open space and threatened agricultural land. A number of public officials are desperate to correct poor growth patterns. In early December 1997, the Ohio Farm Bureau warned that Cincinnati's development had started to threaten a vibrant agricultural economic base in Hamilton County, where agriculture generates $6 billion a year, more than 10 percent of Ohio's entire $50 billion a year agriculture industry. Read the Report | Clickable Sprawl Map | Sprawl-Threatened Cities Up to Top | Printer-friendly version of this page |
